Garlic is doing great

Garlic is doing great

Sat Apr 13, 2013 12:57 pm

It is going to a good year for garlic here on Gixx's Farm. You can see my onions next to the garlic. I planted the onions a weekend before we got 15 inches of snow I was worried but they are coming back. A little Bat Guano goes a lot way.

Re: Garlic is doing great

Sat Apr 13, 2013 2:35 pm

Yes Apple snow does have nitrogen in it. It is called the poor mans fertilizer, though rain and even lightening have even more available nitro.

TZ my spacing is 4-5 inches on plant and about 8 on rows. I have done it like this every year. The rows could be further apart but they do fine. I have a small plot so putting them in tight saves me room. The fact that they are a one time harvest makes it work well too. Not like you have to get in there every few day's to harvest. Just do it basically all at once.

Re: Garlic is doing great

Sat Apr 13, 2013 2:51 pm

Strange experience with my garlic this year. Several plantings were made, some in raised beds of synthetic soil, some in our very sandy ground. All of the garlic in the beds and in one stretch of ground acted normally. But in my largest planting in the ground, in late fall or early winter, the tops suddenly died and the plants went dormant. I dug around and found the small dormant bulbs, but they have remained dormant until just the last week or so. Just yesterday, I noticed green growth has popped up a few inches.

Most of my other garlic is a foot to a foot and a half tall, and has been growing all winter. All garlic was of the same kind of mild winter varieties. I find the behavior of that one bed to be very strange.

Eclectic gardening style, drawing from 45 years of interest and experience. Mostly plant in raised beds and containers primarily using intensive gardening techniques.Alex

Re: Garlic is doing great

Sat Apr 13, 2013 3:40 pm

The larger in ground bed was planted a little earlier from home grown, saved cloves. The other in ground bed was planted a little later with fresh cloves from my on line source. I'm sure those cloves had been harvest one or two months later and am sure that the sprouted later in the fall. Still, when planted in September-November garlic usually sprouts and grows rapidly in the fall, slows during the winter, and then resumes rapid growth in the spring. Can't figure what caused the one bed to shut down, but was 100% of at least 40-60 cloves.

Eclectic gardening style, drawing from 45 years of interest and experience. Mostly plant in raised beds and containers primarily using intensive gardening techniques.Alex